low motivational states facilitate the search for new goals to pursue, whereas high motivational states focus us on completing a specific goal.

The long-standing view in psychology is that positive emotions are conducive to creativity because they broaden the mind, whereas negative emotions are detrimental to creativity because they narrow one’s focus.

It’s true that attentional focus does have important effects on creative thinking

However, emerging research suggests that the positive vs. negative emotions distinction may not be the most important contrast for understanding attentional focus.

research conducted by psychologist Eddie Harmon-Jones and his colleagues suggests that the critical variable influencing one’s scope of attention is not emotional valence (positive vs. negative emotions) but motivational intensity, or how strongly you feel compelled to either approach or avoid something.

Positive emotions low motivational intensity- e.g pleasant broadened the mind (measured by subjects making more holistic matches to a target stimulus)

high motivational intensity- e.g desire narrowed subjects’ scope of attention (subjects made more detail-oriented matches to a target stimulus)

negative emotions low motivational intensity- e.g sadness broadened attentional focus

high motivational intensity- e.g disgust a state of high motivational intensity for avoidance) narrowed focus.

If you want to keep an open mind and see the big picture, it’s probably best if you’re just in a pleasant (or even sad) mood.

If, however, you really need to buckle down and focus on making a new idea practical, high motivational intensity can be just the ticket.

Psychologists studying creativity have discovered that it is based on cognitive processes we all share. Creativity is not the result of some magic brain region that some people have and others don't.

creativity isn't limited to left-leaning designers, artists, and architects alone. Ideas and inspiration can (and should) come from everyone, regardless of their background.

Follow these steps and you'll find creativity can be achieved in just about any context.

Insights: defining the problem First, start by defining the problem at hand. Keep reframing the problem until it's clear to you and the others working on it. The problem and the path to resolution should be rooted in research and user-validation.

Saturation: getting in the mindset Immerse yourself in whatever information is available, then dig deeper for more.

Incubation: letting it all sink in "thinking aside", as you're essentially putting your brain on the shelf and stepping away. By turning off your mind this way, you're allowing the information to set in and that subsequent spark of creativity the necessary room to ignite.

Illumination: the notable 'aha!' moment We know this as the "Aha!" moment that hits when we least expect it. Whether in the shower or in line at the grocery store, it's the unforeseen moment during which that thousand watt light bulb suddenly turns on and the solution seems clear.

Verification: remove any biasOnce you've hooked that brilliant idea, it's time to reel it in and conduct a close-up examination.

In life, you don't have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you're a CEO. CEOs aren't born.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don't ever call me Peter - that was just my government name.

It's through working with a lot of first-time directors that I realized that people learn on their feet. Everybody works on something for a different reason. Everybody has got something new to learn on these sets, and you don't have to know everything, the second you start.

The advocates of abortion on demand falsely assume two things: that women must suffer if the lives of unborn children are legally protected; and that women can only attain equality by having the legal option of destroying their innocent offspring in the womb.

I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn't mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write... I learned that writer's block is a myth created by people who don't have, or understand, a writing process.

To me, the blues is an infection. I don't think it's necessarily a melancholy thing; the blues can be really positive and I think I think anyone and everyone can have a place for the blues. It need not always a woeful, sorrowful thing. It's more reflective; it reminds you to feel.

No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.

Politics is a people business. I like people.

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

I played a paraplegic on a show called 'Neighbours.' Just turned up on set, sat in a wheelchair. The producer came up to me one day and said, 'We have to cut around that entire scene because your leg was moving.'

Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.

All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

Without Allah on your side, you can do nothing. With Allah on your side, there is nothing you cannot do.

My personal assessment is that Dr. King is the greatest American we have ever produced. I can argue for Lincoln, I can argue for FDR, but for my money, King is the greatest American we have ever produced. His only weapon was love. He transforms a nation, transforms the world with one weapon and that of course being again the weapon of love. So that for me, King is the quintessential example of everything that I could ever want to be in my lifetime.

I enjoy thinking myself into other times and places. I don't like some of the conventions of the 'historical novel', but I think there's a way of doing it that has a lot of merit.

Hint: money flows into most funds after good performance, and goes out when bad performance follows.

Nobody is original anymore. Nobody has any original style.

If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work. Now who wants that?

I found it possible to observe at least the superficial capillaries of muscles both in the frog and in mammals through a binocular microscope, using strong reflected light as a source of illumination. Resting muscles observed in this way are usually quite pale, and the microscope reveals only a few capillaries at fairly regular intervals.

I think people like Bill Gates, who have given away enormous sums of money, are shining examples for all of us to follow.

I don't have a burning desire to act, strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.